RICHARD PRINCE

Born in the Panama Canal ZoneLives and works in Upstate New York, USA

For Henzel Studio, Richard Prince created a free-form design informed by a series of collages featuring numbers.

Richard Prince has since the late 70’s filtered imagery from mass media, advertising and entertainment, and through re-appropriation turned them into original works, thereby redefining concepts of authorship, ownership and artistic context. Applying his understanding of representation and the complex transactions involved in the making of art, he evolved a unique signature that is unquestionably his own. His selection of mediums and subject matters, as well as his practice of cropping, editing, and sequencing of images, suggest a uniquely individual logic. Prince refocuses us on the ordinary; he gives it to us repeatedly, in serial form, until it becomes “extra ordinary”. Prince’s deliberate redundancy, and incessant return of the same, plays with our sense of reality. By selecting and re-presenting the already contrived image as a carefully cropped and framed artwork, he brings us closer to its essential fiction, making it more real in the process. Chronicler of American subcultures and vernaculars and their role in the construction of American identity, he has explored the depths of racism, sexism, and psychosis in mainstream humor; the mythical status of cowboys, bikers, customized cars, soft porn and celebrities. Prince focuses on themes and iconography that, when seen altogether, express an incisive commentary of present-day America.